Nassim Taleb tweeted few days ago:
“You can replace lies with truth; but myth is only displaced with a narrative.”
I would have preferred “displaced with a myth” but that’s what Taleb meant anyway. As I mentioned I have been reading about the time of Constantine the Great who brought Christianity to the Roman Empire. For me the interesting question is how do ideas scale? Anyone can be a Jesus Christ, some of us who hang around the Lubavitcher Rebbe, got to observe and get emotionally contaminated with the complex dynamics of the human response to such a phenomenon, witnessed the activation of the messianic gene up close and personal.
Truth tramps over England. Detail: Tomb of Pope Alexander VII in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican. By Morelli and Cartari.
But how does a “brand” take over a Roman empire? Contrary to a popular perception it’s never a revolution. I.e. let’s break all the idols and believe in one God. Rather for centuries the Jews and then the Christians have been branding the idea that their God is the King of all gods. So it might be useful to hedge this All-mighty in a battle. Indeed this is what Constantine tried by allegedly marking all his soldiers with a cross before a decisive battle. In other words, it’s the warrior haShem Tzevaot aspect of the Jewish God that appealed to Constantine. The peace loving Jesus was shoved under the imperial carpet*. And transition to Christianity was a smooth merger of the Pagan myth into the Christian myth. It was an upgrade not a reinstall, with the legacy code fully intact.
So the fascinating side of the conversation about James Kugel’s book is that people are rather nonchalant about the lies to truth transition. James Kugel and the documentary hypothesis demolished the traditional reading at the foundation of Judaism – no problem. Most surprisingly they readily accept the redactor, the deductor, whatever… But then comes the voice of the angry mob, irate at Kugel that he didn’t provide any new myth to replace the old one, nor is he particularly interested in the transition. Indeed as Taleb wrote the transition from lies to truth is easy but you can’t expect people to go from myth to no myth cold turkey. One needs a “narrative”. That’s how indoctrination works, you get hooked on a myth and its a start of a beautiful life long dependency.
* This story always amazes me. After Constantine became an emperor he made a trip from his base, in what was later known as Constantinople, to Rome. And although Constantine didn’t formerly accept Christianity till he was on his deathbed, while in Rome he made a point of staying away from the Pagan celebrations. When he didn’t appear at the ceremonial sacrifice to the Jupiter Maximus, the Roman mob was angered and pelted his stature with stones.
While in Rome Constantine ordered his own son Crispus killed because allegedly there was an affair between Crispus and his stepmother Fausa (both in their 30s). Constantin’s mother Helena, about to relocate to Jerusalem, was in grief about her grandson. Soon thereafter, in order to pacify Helena or for other unknown reason, Constantine had his own wife Fausta thrown into a bath full with boiling water.
During this trip to Rome (before, after or during the time Constantine the Great killed his only son from his first marriage and cooked alive his second wife and mother of the five young children) the Saint Constantine, as he is know in the Orthodox Church, laid the cornerstone of the Old St. Peter’s Basilica in what would eventually become the Vatican.
Further reading:
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For some reason I don’t think Taleb’s quote is about indoctrination. Maybe that was his intention, but if that is the case he inadvertently hits on something bigger. Narrative is a lot more encompassing then myth, but there all the same. It is difficult to just give up an orthodox view of Judaism, but it is a heck of a lot easier if one has the documentary hypothesis and a detailed view of that history built up by academics to take its place. Same with the creation myth, nonbelievers almost always replace it with the current narrative from cosmology and evolution.
I would even say that narrative extends in to your case on Internet communication. It is a narrative about how modern technology replaces the more deep, meaningful and real relationships of days gone by. You juxtapose this with the “myth” of a new type of communication enchanting human relationships like never before.
David, there is a blind spot of our existence. The difference between a myth and a narrative is that myth attempts to explain it all, you can scale a myth. A narrative is a patch to close part or temporarily all of the blind spot. They are related and interchangeable but not the same thing.
I don’t understand the new technology reference.
That’s an interesting distinction, one that deserves more thought on my part. As for the technology point, it was mostly in reference to your post “Friends in a Two Mile Radius”. It struck me as part of a larger narrative of social isolation due to mass urbanization and technological reliance (which as far as I know goes back to Durkheim’s “anomie”). The narrative always seems to lead to go something like “man tries to improve life through technology X, but this bites him on the ass.” Much of the environmental movement seems to use the same narrative structure, as well as mind-body medicine.
The thing is that I am not looking at the internet as yet another technology gone wrong or a revolution that didn’t live up to the potential. This is one of the leaps, like writing or print, that transcends revolutions and the incremental inventions. And this meta change is in crisis.
I suppose my urge is connect your commentary on the web to something larger then just the internet and internet related activities, though I admit that this is probably far beyond my scope. In any event, thanks for the clarification.
People might get confused between this Helen and Queen Helene of Adiabene who appears in Jewish traditions.
You are right they were separated by almost 4 centuries. Constantin’s mother moved to Jerusalem and allegedly found and brought to Constantinople the actual cross. Helena the queen of Adiabene lived in Jerusalem about 50 years before Jesus was born.